Invisible Empire

A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carré

Once again on his home turf of Germany, the consummate spymaster Le Carre calls in a full programme of "espiocrats" and their persons of interest. They materialize from the shadow world; before the story ends they all return to their dust. Americans are bullies, Brits are affected, Russians are crude, Germans are in it for themselves, and start to finish it's all about greed. Follow the money, and no one lives happily ever after.

Comfort Reading

The Earth is the Lord's by Abraham Joshua Heschel

Fall has moved in with a cold fog, a warm quilt, a hot cuppa, a purring cat, a symphony playing on the radio....time for a good old favorite book. Often in such a mood I turn to Heschel for the beautiful simplicity with which he writes about life totally absorbed in God. I can read a bit and think a bit and read a bit more, enjoying the beauty of the spiritual universe contained in a nutshell of language. The subject of The Earth is the Lord's is the lost courtly world of Jewish Eastern Europe, described poignantly and lovingly by one of its royal princes for an audience of Americans who never were there and never can go. Every word, every one of the magnificent woodblock illustrations conveys love: love of the life of holiness, love of the holiness of life, as close to "on earth as it is in heaven" as you can get. I close my well worn copy gently with my soul purring.

Who My Neighbors Are

My Jesus Year, by Benyamin Cohen

Here is the son of a rabbi, the scion of generations of rabbis, who grows up in famously secular Atlanta and marries a recent convert from Christianity. He decides that if his wife could spend three years converting to Judaism, he can spend a year exploring the majority Christian culture. He begins at Stone Mountain, where he professes surprise that not all Christians are a monolith. His reportage is gentle. He's interested in and respectful of the people he meets wherever he goes.

Readers of this blog will be happy that he found the Episcopalians serious and reverent. In fact he found lots of Christians, most of whom after seeing this book in print will be pleased to call Cohen a friend. The friend he did not find among Christians, after a year of intense looking, is Jesus. Cohen doesn't seem to name that an indictment of Christian practice in Atlanta, but I do. Nobody from St. Bartholomew's to the New Birth Missionary Baptist megachurch managed to present Jesus to the body, mind and soul of someone earnestly seeking him.

Return to the Hundred Acre Woods

Readers have had to wait eighty years since Pooh and Piglet were last seen in the Hundred Acre Woods. And what joy there is in those woods as the news spreads from Owl to Rabbit to Kanga and Roo and finally over to Eeyore (who doubts it): Christopher Robin is back! So begins school holiday, with a Boy a little older and a Tale no less endearing and a Very Modern Problem as the water supply dries up in the Hundred Acre Woods, the bees migrate and it's left to a Bear of Little Brain to entice them back. With a copy of the four previous books remade into a sturdy and handsome new edition and the new chapter by David Benedictus and Mark Burgess to complete the quintet, it's been the happiest Sunday. And joy O joy, tomorrow's a bank holiday!

Acedia and Me

Acedia and Me: Marriage, Monks and a Writer's Life by Kathleen Norris

This is the latest offering from the author of Dakota, The Cloister Walk and Amazing Grace. Fans of Kathleen Norris will find that deep in the throes of her blue period, with her writer husband hospitalized for a depression more serious than hers, she delivers what amounts to another chapter of her running narrative journal. It's depressing both as a life and as a read. The contemporary monks are incidental. The ancient monks of the desert take their place as sources of wisdom and encouragement, as Norris turns to the desert fathers' term acedia to describe her state of spiritual emptiness, boredom and depression.

Buy this book, but not for its depressing narrative. Buy this book for its wonderful "chapbook" of wisdom on the subject of acedia and depression, quotations from spiritual writers through the ages who have written on that all too common experience. Have this on hand to be able to offer that wisdom when a parishioner or a colleague needs it, or to turn to when you recognize your own movement into a cycle of hopelessness and loss. There's nothing else quite like it available.

Tell It Slant

The title's misleading; this isn't a book about Emily Dickinson who penned the line "tell it slant". Rather it is a book of reflections by Eugene H. Peterson, who did the Bible paraphrase "The Message", imagining what it would be like to hear Jesus speaking in the first person his parables and prayers. Just released in advance of Year C preaching, the reflections are more sermon starters than commentary, covering the Gospel of Luke chapters 9-19 along with the Lord's Prayer, the Prayer in Gethsemane, the Seven Last Words, the High Priestly Prayer and a few other shorter prayer passages. Likely this book will be most useful in preparation for Lent and Holy Week in the C years; at other times it can take its place on the shelf of New Testament -- Luke for consultation as needed.

My Stroke of Insight

Jill Bolte Taylor was an up and coming neuroscientist at the age of 37 when one morning she had a stroke. It was a major stroke on the left side of the brain, causing temporary loss of her cognitive and motor abilities. Her recovery, to the point of now being able to teach and do public speaking, has taken eight years. This is her own story of losing herself and with the help of her mother finding herself again.

Aside from the compelling story, the crystal clear explanation of what happens in an ischemic stroke and the advice to caregivers "forty things I needed the most" make this book a worthwhile resource for those want to be a good help to neuroimpaired neighbors, as well as for families who need assistance demystifying what has happened to a loved one.